By Sheikh Saaliq / AP
NEW DELHI — Altaf Ahmad Shah, a prominent politician in Kashmir who challenged India’s rule over the disputed region for decades and had been jailed by Indian authorities for the past five years, has died while in police custody, his family said Tuesday. He was 66.
Shah was arrested by Indian authorities in 2017 in a “terror-funding case” and was held in New Delhi’s Tihar jail, where he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in September. After repeated family appeals to senior government officials, including a letter to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, the jailed leader was moved to New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences for treatment, where he died Monday night.
Tihar jail officials did not immediately comment on Shah’s death.
Shah is the fourth separatist leader from India-controlled Kashmir to have died in police custody in the last three years. He was part of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, an anti-India political group, and one of the staunchest supporters of demands for Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan.
Last year, Shah’s father-in-law and the region’s staunchest anti-India leader, Syed Ali Geelani, 91, died at his residence in Srinagar after nearly 10 years of house arrest. Earlier in 2021, separatist leader Mohammed Ashraf Sehrai, 78, died due to multiple ailments while in jail.
India has arrested thousands of Kashmiris under stringent laws imposed when an armed rebellion erupted seeking the region’s independence or merger with Pakistan, which controls another part of the territory. Rights groups say India has used the law to stifle dissent and circumvent the justice system, undermining accountability, transparency, and respect for human rights.
India considers the armed rebellion a proxy war by Pakistan and deems it to be state-sponsored terrorism. Most Muslim Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle and support the rebels’ goal for the divided territory to be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
This story was originally published in washingtonpost.com . Read the full story here
